Juliette Losq

Juliette Losq is drawn to the overlooked and neglected. Inspired by a long tradition of artists who turn to ruins as their subject-matter, her work finds its antecedent in the Picturesque and Gothic movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Working in both oil and watercolour, Losq highlights the ephemerality of these decaying structures whilst ‘fixing’ them at a particular moment of collapse and decline.

In common with artists associated with the eighteenth-century Gothic, her work positions sites of contemporary ruination as places where the nefarious, sinister or unfamiliar may occur. Cyphers of the passage of time, ruins embody both the past and present whilst projecting a potential future. This changeability is what has attracted Losq to depict sites of dilapidation so frequently in her work.

The works exhibited here are based on three-dimensional models constructed from images taken during explorations of abandoned or semiderelict areas. Though derived from real landscapes, through the process of model-making, Losq reconfigures these to form imaginary spaces. The imagery for these particular pieces comes from industrial and post-industrial waterways including the River Wandle and Platts Eyott in Hampton. These themes of decay and forgotten architectural ruins resonate with the rich and undulating history of the House. The works are particularly evocative as they resurrect and celebrate the forgotten and ‘declining’ and the notion of reinterpreting these ruins as worthy of study.

Born in 1978, Juliette Losq graduated from Wimbledon College of Art (2004 -2007) and the Royal Academy Schools (2007-2010), as well as studying English and History of Art at Newnham College, Cambridge (1997-2000) and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, London (2000-2001). Losq won the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2005, was shortlisted for the Catlin Prize in 2011, and was one of the five shortlisted artists for the John Moores Prize in 2014.

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